ikike

Ikike is the fundamental vehicle for the attainment of the change HOMEF seeks to build by creating spaces for knowledge creation, interrogation and sharing.

About Ikike

As an ecological think tank, Health of Mother Earth Foundation (HOMEF), from inception has created avenues through which community people, environmental and human rights activists and other stakeholders come together to learn and share knowledge of prevailing issues.
After a long and hard search for concepts that best capture these learning spaces, we settled on the word IKIKE. This word has important meanings in two Nigerian/African Languages.
In Ibibio, it means listen, reasoning power, common sense and intellect. In Igbo, it has multiple meanings including rights, authoritative, capability and jurisdiction.
In resolving to call our knowledge space Ikike, we anchor on reasoning power, intellect and rights.
Ikike is thus the umbrella word for our learning spaces which include Sustain-Ability Academy, School of Ecology, Community Dialogues, Conversations and Learning from the Wise..

 

Sustain-Ability Academy

We call this our Sustain-Ability Academy because the aim is to build human abilities to sustain our biodiversity, livelihoods and intergenerational justice. The Academy provides us a space where we invite one instigator (speaker) at a time to interrogate one vital contemporary issue holistically and in some detail. It is convened in the form of a lecture, but not in the ordinary sense because the instigator must also be open to learning from participants. Each academy session which is usually a one-day event is hosted as a multi-locational event with the same instigator speaking at each location.

School of Ecology

The School of Ecology (SoE) is a vital part of HOMEF’s IKIKE, a knowledge space for the interrogation of concepts, policies and actions on various issues, ranging from environmental/climate justice, agriculture, re-source democracy and overall socio-ecological transformation. Our SoEs are central to our efforts to build participants’ reasoning power, intellect and rights.

The school challenges mindsets and points at alternatives aimed at building wellbeing without harming our planet, other species and peoples.

Our target scholars are people of all ages in government and private sector who can help effect the change we seek. They are professionals from all parts of the world selected based on expertise, interest and a commitment to learn and contribute significantly to the subject/issue of focus.  

Community Dialogues

The Community Dialogues (CD) are diagnostic gatherings that provide space for community members to review the environmental/ecological situation in their communities and to identify needed areas of action to preserve /defend their heritage. The Community Dialogues are spaces where the expertise lies with the community while HOMEF team members are the learners. They are spaces for sharing knowledge/competence in environmental monitoring for ecological defense. Resolutions and outputs from these dialogues are used to draw the attention of relevant authorities to the highlighted needs/challenges of the communities

Conversations

Conversations” is part of our learning spaces and  it creates an avenue for participants to learn and share ideas from the lives and resources of reputable thinkers, environmental justice and human rights activists (past and present) in the quest for justice and radical socio-economic transformation.

We aim to ensure that young activists learn from history, passion, dedication, sacrificial struggle of older activists while basing their current struggles and fights for justice on grounded knowledge and carefully thought out plans and analyses. 

Learning from the Wise

Conversations in recent times have been expanded to include sessions of Learning from the Wise (LftW) – A space that promotes transgenerational knowledge sharing by affording young activists an opportunity to sit and learn under older activists in a very informal, traditional tales-by-moonlight-like setting. The LftW session was incorporated into conversations in 2022 and we have had sessions with King Bubaraye Dakolo, the last militant – Comrade Che Ibegwura, and Chief Johnathan Ihonde

The Road Ahead

Our Vision

To arm Africans (young activists, students, policy makers, community people, farmers, fishers, media, and academics) with grounded knowledge on environmental/climate justice, socio-ecological and human rights issues that will enable them resist oppression, make decisions and policies in favor and protection of Africa and African people.

Our Strategy

The different routes of our learning space afford us the room to ensure interrogation, generation, and exchange of knowledge among our focus groups. While our Community Dialogues focus on community persons, farmers and fishers, our Sustain-Ability Academy bridges the gap between knowledge from the academia and local communities, the School of Ecology brings different stakeholders together for proper and balanced interrogation of pressing concepts and issues and our Conversations creates a platform for avoidance of a repetition of mistakes as younger activists get to garner lessons and wisdom from the lives and activism of older activists.

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